Articles

As you visit a sports therapy clinic you are always taken through an assessment process before your receive any treatment. The first part of this process includes telling your therapist about the issue as well as the therapist countering what you say by asking more relative questions to build a bigger picture of how the issue affects you. This also allows the therapist to narrow in on suspicions of the route and cause of the issue. This is called the subjective assessment and it provides a lot of value and meaning to the rest of the assessment and can be referred to at any point in the rehab process to check progress.

Following the subjective assessment there is an objective assessment. This is equally as important and is undertaken based on the findings of the subjective assessment. This may feel like you are being shifted about back, forth and side to side but while you are moving in ways you never have before the therapist is gathering valuable information. The therapist gets information from testing things such as your strength, range of movement and reaction to special provocative tests. You might wonder why the therapist doesn't hand-pick the best tests to allow more time for treatment but with each test there is certain ratings of specificity and accuracy and this increases as more tests are used. This is called 'cluster' testing.

When these two stages of assessment are done thoroughly it makes the choice of treatment, corrective exercises as well as the entire rehabilitation process a lot more effective. Due to all the subjective and objective notes taken, monitoring and ensuring progress is a lot easier and this makes all future results from future tests more meaningful by having comparative data.

So the next time you are being assessed by your therapist, don't watch the clock waiting for treatment. Watch their handling, note-taking and general assessment skills, be as communicative about your pain or discomfort (or lack of) as possible to help the therapist treat you as good as possible. This is a big part of what you are paying for and huge part of what will help get you back doing what you love.